Frank Grevil, 44, admitted to providing the conservative daily Berlingske Tidende with the report, addressed to the Danish government.

The paper published excerpts of the report last February stating that "no reliable information on operational weapons of mass destruction" existed in Iraq before the US-led war there.

Grevil, who was sacked from his job, also admitted to being the anonymous source quoted by the newspaper on the issue.

Commenting on the verdict, judge Elisabeth Larsen said Grevil may have damaged the military intelligence service (FE)'s reputation abroad.

Grevil meanwhile claimed that he had done a public service by leaking the document, and said he was surprised by what he called a harsh verdict.

The sentence, he said, "is completely disproportionate" to the crime.

"It's as if the legal system has forgotten that people sometime follow their conscience, and it was my conscience that led me to provide these documents" to the media, he said, adding that he had hoped for a suspended sentence.

The leaked report was also an embarrassment for Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who publicly insisted that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction as a way of justifying the Scandinavian country's participation in the conflict.

"Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something that we just think. We know it," he told parliament before the war.

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